WAY: Innocence is gone from baseball

The unfortunate part of things changing is that it sometimes takes pleasant memories and dashes them against the rocks and stones of what you remember as being so innocent and pure about life.

Take today’s baseball.

Now, a hundred years ago I was a kid, a kid who loved to play baseball.

I played in the local little league, but my favorite times were playing baseball by myself.

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I literally used to make up teams — individual names and all — and go out in my yard and play baseball.

It involved me batting for both teams, throwing a wiffleball up in the air, hitting it and determining where it would have landed if I were at Connie Mack Stadium to get the results of the at-bat and then quickly dashing over to my “scorebook” and writing it down like it actually happened.

I’d start in late May and by the time school was starting up again I’d have a full season in the books.

I must have looked like a complete boob doing it, but I didn’t care.

I was young, dumb and loved being outside and playing for the sheer fun of playing.

It got me through about four or five boring summers.

Now, this is not to imply that I didn’t play baseball in the neighborhood.

There were three or four other guys on my street and we used to go up to a vacant field and hit the ball around. And it was fun.

But for me, nothing could replace those games between the teams I made up.

The teams were the Easton Bucks, the Greenville Sundays, the Lansing Chiefs and the Baton Rouge Rattlers.

And boy, did they go at it.

Of course, my neighbors got used to this goofy kid running around his yard like he was missing a few screws, but it was only later in life, as I got a little older, that I actually gave a second thought to the fact that I looked like an imbecile.

It’s a shame that getting older means giving up some of that innocence.

But in those days I was too intent on determining a league champ to worry about what I looked like, I only cared about having fun.

I tried to play it straight down the middle and not show favoritism. But I had favorite players and they always got the benefit of the doubt on the close calls, and always managed to find their way into the league leaders (yes, sadly, I actually compiled league leaders).

Flash forward a half-century and those teams are distant memories.

These days kids are practically plucked out of the womb and turned into ballplayers — automatons who all hit and field and run the same way.

In this ridiculous economy where hard-working folks are practically forced to find the economic means to send their kids to college, everybody is scrambling for scholarships and some economic means to get their kids to the next level of education, and the easiest way seems to be pointing their kids toward a field, a court, a pool or a track and saying, “Have fun.”

But the real fun in life is watching Kyle Kendall try to throw a fastball by Dave Ladle with the game on the line.